character movement animations vs speed of movement

[DoctorMO]

I've been watching the development of plane shift for some time and one thing that has always bugged me is that the walking/running animations do not match the speed the characters move so you get a sort of slide effect.

Now this is not new to games, back when I made games for the Atari with 2D graphics it was well known how to get charicters to walk a long a solid line so the feet touching the ground didn't apear to move.

Is there anyone working on fixing this problem? it's either going to be a fix in the movement speed or a fix in the animations. either way I can't really play plane shift until it's fixed since it's just too anoying to slide everwhere. and I havn't worked out how to run yet.

[Datruth]

Run is R, press R again to stop running.

Or hold Left shift and use up arrow = run.

[Karyuu]

We'll need a much more customizable animation system to do this, unfortunately. We will get a better one at some point, as this is the least of the things we can't really do right.

[Under the moon]

The problem is with the speed itself. Or perhaps distance would be a better way to say it. As I understand, the speed is based on so many space units per time unit. The space units are not very small, and the speed is calculated in whole numbers. I can not remember quite what the numbers were, but I think 1 is creep or swim, 2 is walk, and 3 is run. It is very hard for an animator to match the animations to exact speeds like that. It is much easier to have a more precisely tuned speed system and match that to an existing animation. I do not know if the current system can go in less than 1 unit increments, but it would help.

[Kezzik]

this has always been something people point out, but also too, one of the least important things to fix, the movemnt system itself could do with some tweaking as such.

hrm.. a sprint ability could prove interesting.

[DoctorMO]

I refute those that say it's not important, while it's not a part of the game play it hurts to realism of the world and makes it very hard for the mind to believe what it's seeing.

The movement systems you describe sound very limited, I thought some creatures could move faster/slower?

You should have 4 or more categories of animation, creep, swim, walk, run wach one atuned to the speed that creature at that category of movement.

ultimatly it's for the programmers to sort out and I'm sure they will. I just wish they'd do it forst.